I think you have to acknowledge that other people might see things differently than you.
12 Likes
I think you have to acknowledge that other people might see things differently than you.
Sure, art is subjective, even bad commercials. But is the exercise of analysis valuable at all, then?
That’s unfortunate, as both @gracchus and I tried to explain why the ad is inadvertently offensive upthread.
I even broke it down what Peloton could have done instead with the ad’s premise…
That this commercial is not as absolutely incredibly sexist as it could have been doesn’t in any way mean that makes the ad “okay.”
That so many folks (most of whom seem to be male identifying) don’t see ‘anything wrong’ with the ad is part of the problem.
8 Likes
There’s a big gap between doing analysis and saying that other people’s views must be them intentionally misrepresenting their reactions.
11 Likes
OK, then they are just really bad reactions.
5 Likes
That’s how advertising works. You make a commercial The internet explodes with criticism calling it creepy, sexist and likening it to a 30 second episode of Black mirror. It gets mocked and parodied on news and comedy shows. And the moral of the story is that people are irrational and not that it was a shitty commercial.
7 Likes
Sounds like this commercial is like the ‘Yanny’ and ‘Laurel’ phenomenon. I never thought of any of the things you pointed out and I’ve watched all of Black Mirror.
Beer ads with bikini babes while eye rolling are not the same thing as this creepy ad.
7 Likes
“15-Million Merits” (with the enforced riding of stationary bicycles) and “The Entire History of You” (with the on-going and anxiety-ridden self-surveillance/lifelogging and the bland design aesthetic) from season 1 both immediately came to mind for me. From the comments I’ve seen, I’m not alone in this.
8 Likes
OK, well there I go and inserted a statement that was implied, but not specified. IIRC she was smiling at the end. But yes, not all change is good. Perhaps afterwards she took a bat or one of those Sawsalls with a metal cutting blade and rendered it asunder.
I don’t disagree that some people thought about it that way but can you see how many people thought it just looked like any other commercial if they don’t import that sort of backstory? It still looks like just another obnoxious commercial about conspicuous consumption by type-a, upper middle class strivers.
Sure. You’ll note that I didn’t say “all people” but rather “many people”. And “Black Mirror” aside, the anxious-looking actor and other aspects still made it creepy.
4 Likes
all stationary bikes are fitness bikes, and claiming otherwise would certainly be “cult-like”
3 Likes
I once got my wife a laminator for xmas. I was genuinely convinced it was what she wanted as she was always going on about ‘things i could do with a lam…’.
Next day when i told my boss, a woman, she literally grabbed me by the collar and dragged me mall to get something ‘more appropriate’ and gift shamed me…
I. Learned a lesson that day.
3 Likes
Its not as if I think we couod or shouod go back to the “bad old days” of nobility and peerage. But what that era had, that thus era lacks, was someone you could reasonably point to, and say, “that person is responsible for this mess”.
Today instead of monarchs running the show, corporations get to pick and choose their public face at will. I doubt the guillotines would return because we just don’t have any sense of who these corporations are, what kind of people theyre made up of. Its wouldnt feel very satisfying to kill them. Instead, we will just continue to get random 'muckers exploding into murder with a trigger only they perceive.
Im not surprised Jack Gleeson got mobbed out of acting, he was cast in a role that people are so hungry to hate, he never got to leave it behind.
Here’s her op-ed.
3 Likes
2 Likes
6 Likes
